These past few days in Germany have been full of pleasant surprises and adventures! Monday and Tuesday were filled mainly with coding and drawing diagrams, but they were also relaxing days! We were blessed with a little bit of rain on Monday as well.

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to visit one of Heide’s daughters, Carmen, and help her in her garden! When Carmen showed me where I would be working, I was a little worried at first because I was about seven feet off of the ground with only about two feet or less of standing room on an inclined surface with a wall of overgrowth to my right and a drop off to my left.

All I could think of was the safety zone videos I watched while I was on my mission. I said a prayer before getting started and I looked for alternate ways to get to the overgrowth that I needed to cut, and the Lord helped me find a way through the neighbor’s part of the garden area. I had to clear the weeds in his plot of land first to be able to get to the part I needed to weed. It was funny as I was clearing the neighbor’s plot because he stuck his head out his window and asked what I was doing, to which I tried to explain in German that I was clearing the weeds. Once he understood that I was helping Carmen he was cool with me clearing his weeds as well! Risk of falling wasn’t the only challenge though, there were also a bunch of wasps and some hornets (hornets are like scarier and bigger versions of wasps that really like to eat fruit) and thorns! The Lord kept me safe though and I was able to clear out the weeds effectively and quickly.

Carmen felt very happy with my help and shared some of her food with me! She made some hotdogs with potato salad! I love when people share food with me, it is pretty great!

On Thursday I had the opportunity to do some more weeding and enjoy some more hotdogs! It was a fun time and Ramona even came out to help! I had picked most of the ripe blackberries on Wednesday, so the weeding went a bit faster! When Carmen made me lunch, she also showed me her record player and we listened to a disney story book about The Sword in the Stone in German and the voice actors were funny! It was a wonderful day!

While I was pulling weeds and eating blackberries, it reminded me of the parables in the scriptures about the Lord’s Vineyard and how He worked hard to preserve the fruit in His Vineyard. Also not all of the plants produced good fruit, and I discovered the same applied to blackberries, some were sweet and others were very sour. However, while I was weeding, I did my best to either eat all of the ripe blackberries or put them in the bucket Carmen lent me for later!

It took a while to pick off the blackberries and I even got stabbed a bunch of times by the thorns on the plants, but knowing that the blackberries were good and that it would be a shame to lose them made the extra time and risk of being stabbed worth it. I think in a way it is the same with us. Our Heavenly Father can see our worth, and even though we require a lot of patience from Him and we do not always serve Him as we could, He takes the time and effort to gather us and preserve us so that we can be with Him again! He loves us very much and we can always turn to Him for His help!